Congratulations to Zindzi Thompson! She has become the youngest Black woman to graduate from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
“I have always wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember, there’s nothing else that I wanted to be,” she told News Channel 5.
Thompson’s parents shared that their daughter knew she wanted to become a doctor from an early age. “She’s wanted to be a doctor since she was 3 years old and we saw that she was a little bit different starting at three. So since she was three, she’s worked towards this goal,” said her mother, Machelle Thompson.
At just 13-years-old, Thompson enrolled at Mary Baldwin University in Virginia, which is a 5 hour drive from her home in South Carolina. Her father, Samuel Thompson, says letting her go to achieve her goal away from home was the hardest part.
“A big part of the process has been letting her go and achieve her goal. And that’s been the hardest part,” he told Channel News 5. “The academics for her and knowing that she was going to do it was easy, but not having your daughter through those years was the hard part.”
Zindzi Thompson comes from a family of doctors. At least a dozen family members have graduated from Meharry Medical College before her. Today, the 21-year-old is looking to debut her career in psychiatry. She will be starting a psychiatry residency at Washington University Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.
She credits her success to not giving up when faced with uncertainty during her studies. “Just don’t give up. Just push through. If you have to re-take a course, re-take it and do better — you can definitely do it, it’s not impossible,” she said, speaking of her organic chemistry and biochem classes.
“She’ll make history. And I think about my ancestors and everything that they went through, and then I look at my daughter, and it’s amazing. It truly is,” said Machelle Thompson.